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God's Reality

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“Holy, holy, holy is the  Lord  of hosts;   the whole earth is full of his glory!” -Isaiah 6 :3   When we read Isaiah’s famous vision, we are transported into another  realm , the one where God dwells concretely and tangib ly. We are seeing something that we long for as much as we fear it, a vision of the awesome and terrifying glory of God.  We long to see Him fully because like Augustine said, “our hearts are restless until they rest in You ;”  yet we  do not  have language  or capacity to hold in our eyes the piercing and blinding power of God’s being. We can only  fall down  in the face of this vision and cry out “woe  is  me! ”  This  is not  an exercise in piety, it is a visceral reaction to God’s otherness, His strangeness and alien-ness. He is so beyond words.  In our current situation, we tend to not see God in this way.  Maybe this  is  a mercy ,  maybe this  is...
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In His Light We Can Truly See

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The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.  (John 1:5)   Without Jesus we do not understand Who God is.  W e also do not understand  ourselves  either.  Humans are born with limited  information available to us . We know we exist and that others exis t with us, but we do not know our purpose and  the meaning of our lives.   Without  someone telling  us, we cannot know .  We look around us grasping for value , for direction, and there is no other human who really knows  the answer . There are guesses but nothing concrete.  We  also  somehow  long  to become a  perfection that we  do not  consist of and for a  likewise perfect  world f ree of darkness and ignorance.  We know we are  made for   more,  yet  we  do not   know for  what.  Theologian Suzanne de Dietrich wrote about this dilemma  and the...
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The Stealthy Light

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The story of Jesus’ temptation in the Gospels offers a fascinating window into the dynamics of the Trinity and more specifically God the Son’s relationship to the other members of it. But it also gives us insight into the devil and the nature of evil.   At the onset of this story, we can see that Jesus does not ask us to live the kind of life that He  didn’t  live Himself. Christ asks us to follow Him, and this results in friction with the prevailing spiritual climate around us. This friction includes the possibilities of being allured by the culture of those who are only interested in following their definitions of what it means to be human apart from God's loving rule. Satan hates God’s rule at the core of his personality. As much as Jesus loves His Father's ways, the devil hates them with an equal intensity. We often idolize the rebels, but Satan  isn’t  opposing a fascist regime or a corrupt system, he is opposing a good Father. He is opposing the crucified ...
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Changing Directions

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It is easy to swerve off the road when conditions are bad. Even the most experienced driver can lose control when the elements are against them.   We often think we are headed the right way when suddenly a storm hits, and we second-guess our choices. The way forward seems impossible; a detour seems easier, or what if we just turned around instead? Our life journey with Jesus can seem like this. The way forward often has resistance; the Christian life is not easy. We think, “What if I just went back?” Yet to go back is a dead end; the only way is forward. We have been that way before, and there  isn’t  anything worth going back to.  It’s  just ashes breezing through our fingers compared with the reward ahead of us. The reward is Christ Himself, finally seen with all of our senses , no longer  veiled  and hidden. But the way backwards often seems like  a good idea . We can be walking forward and still thinking about life “back there.” We  essen...
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